Boston travelers scramble after fire at London's Heathrow Airport cancels flights
Boston travelers at Logan Airport had to make last-minute plans after some flights in and out of London's Heathrow Airport were canceled on Friday.
The delays and cancellations were caused by a fire at an electrical substation that knocked out power to the popular travel hub.
Boston travelers stranded
"I was very stressed. I was panicking," Charity Conner of Foxboro said. "Thousands of people are stuck now, so I wasn't sure I was going to get home."
Conner arrived in London on Monday for a business trip. She woke up to the news that her flight from Heathrow on Friday morning had been canceled.
"I have never experienced such an ordeal," she said.
One flight of passengers leaving from Boston headed to London had to do a U-turn just past Canada.
"We went three hours over and three hours back. So the flight was the same amount of time, but I just didn't end up where I wanted to be," one traveler said.
Other travelers never left, boarding in Boston Thursday night and then sitting on a parked plane until their crew hit their time limitations.
"We were booked on the 11 o'clock flight last night and then we sat on the aircraft until two," said traveler Richard Hoad. "The crew kept coming on saying another half an hour, another half an hour. And then at two o'clock, their hours, they couldn't fly so then we got off."
Flights should resume Friday night
Travel expert Gilbert Ott of Point.me said flights at Heathrow should resume Friday night, but this ordeal will impact passengers for days to come. Two flights out of Logan from JetBlue and Delta are still on track to leave, but a British Airways flight out of Logan was canceled.
"Unlike typical delays or cancellations affecting one airline, this one is very complicated because no airlines are flying. It's not easy to get rebooked onto another flight," Ott explained.
"Your first thought is, 'When am I going to get out of here?' The panic and thousands of people are trying to rebook and do the same thing," Conner said.
Conner is now planning to take a train from London to Brussels and then catch a flight from Brussels to Boston.
"I'm not getting home until tomorrow night. I was supposed to be home today," Conner said from a London train station. "But I'm here. I'm waiting it out. I'll get there eventually."
